


aphelion

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Fic of Fic, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Niall-centric, Pining, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4664613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<i>So you’re going straight to Tokyo and then where, and then where, and then where, etc. So you’re actually leaving.</i>" // a niall-pov snapshot from the 'different names for the same thing' series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	aphelion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fervent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fervent/gifts).
  * Inspired by [in orbit of & at arm's length](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3577632) by [fervent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fervent/pseuds/fervent). 



> clare, light of my heart, thank you for giving me permission to play this v smol bit in the majestic sandbox that is [ACDEL/IO](http://archiveofourown.org/series/230790), and for a lovely lil prompt about bitter unresolved endings, which this isn't entirely, but ik yk. i hope it's something close to true. cheers, A, for enabling and telling me i'm the worst. and y'all: this is readable-ish if you haven't read the aforelinked series -- all you rly need to know is thelma is the boat -- but PLEEEASE DO read the source material, you deserve some magic in ur life. :)

> aphelion (n.): the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is furthest from the sun.  
>  _we have the boat in the harbor regardless of the waves / we have the sun on the other side of the planet._ \--cv

Niall creeps into his hostel in Tokyo in the middle of the night, shoves his stuff under the only open bottom bunk and then flops onto it, stares at the frame of the bunk above him as his eyes adjust to the dark. Body buzzing. He can hear strangers breathing all around him and he left LA 12 hours ago and now he's in Japan.

Doesn't have that feeling like _what am I doing here_ , but he does, too, a version of it. _How can I be here and everywhere and still be there, where I left my friends. How I can put him in my backpack._ How can they want each other and the same things at the same time, and in the same place.

Can't, not now, apparently. Niall thinks that with the detached ease of deep exhaustion but he can't sleep, either, and after five requisite minutes of trying he hauls himself back out of bed, locks his stuff up and heads out into the night. 

Bright and neon loud here in a way LA should have helped prepare him for but didn't, worlds away from Charleston. It would be going on early morning anywhere else in the world but it's a weekend and Tokyo's awake, and Niall likes it, that loud, the way your skin likes the sun. He turns his face up to the lights and grins at no one, points in a random direction and goes in search of friends.

He finds them in a karaoke place three blocks up from the hostel, gamely drinks Sapporo and sings the Eagles with a bunch of young businessmen in shirtsleeves who all adore him instantly, keep buying more rounds and making him sing again, shouting bro-ishly in Japanese. Niall can hardly speak a word in common with them but he's trying out his _arigato_ s and his _doo itashimashite_ s, thank you, you're welcome, _hai, hai_ , mate. It makes them laugh like _you're alright, man, you can stay._

It's only hours later that he has a moment, watching one of them drunkenly, earnestly butcher his way through some Adele not-ballad in front of the emptying bar -- only then does he have space to think about it: how much they'd like it here. Harry would be quiet but as game as Niall, in his way, never let them leave, would cling to these Japanese dudes until he was fluent and they were all Instagram friends. Liam would think it was fun, funny, and Zayn would too because Liam did. Louis would -- 

Niall smiles into his beer, a little tight. He said he wouldn't do this. Carved out a different set of expectations for _keeping in touch_ than _staying together_ , than staying whatever they are -- were -- than calling it anything. He'd told him himself they weren't doing it like that. That it wasn't worth it to fight the distance. Worth it even less to think of him every step, in a dozen countries, time zone after time. It'll be forever before they're even on the same continent again. 

He applauds raucously when Adele friend wraps it up, finishes his beer. Another one appears before he can decide if he's leaving. Figures he'll just stay up until tomorrow, then. It's 16 hours' difference back across the Pacific to LA, a 12-hour flight, bullshit, all of it. It feels important, but he's too drunk to figure out if the sun's setting there or if it's still day. Niall's never known an ocean to feel like this before. 

*

He lugs his shit around the city the next day, tired in a daze, makes it to mid-afternoon sightseeing before he has to go back to the hostel and crash like the irresponsible jetlagger he is. Goes back out in the glowy blue end of the day, catches up with his friends from karaoke and eats conveyer belt sushi and can't tell if they're playing a joke on him or not but can't complain. A museum the next day, with his brain thawed out from a real night's rest: one gallery of wall-sized photos, murals really, a room full of them where he spends nearly an hour. Thinks of them again, his fucking artist friends. Liam on a bike down a dirt road back East, away from the camera. Louis in the dark and the cut of the music. Remembers this, and this, can't help but remember. 

He passes the walk back to the train station imagining their explanations for the murals, the ridiculous machinations of each of their minds. _It's dicks_ , he hears Zayn intone, over Louis' fierce, arty protests. _It's always dicks._

They haven't talked. He takes the bullet train north one afternoon and ends up in village foothills, searching out a country restaurant he'd read about somewhere, his guidebook beaten up from being shoved to the bottom of his backpack, like he can pretend he knows what he's doing. He stares up at lush green hillsides dotted with towns and skeletal switchbacks, his heavy pack making his shoulders ache and a sunburn already on his nose from California, and he feels exactly how he'd wanted to in this -- alone but not lonely, like he's doing something that'll matter to him later, like that's enough. Hefts his shit higher, savors the weight, keeps going up.

The place turns out to feel like someone's house, and he washes up there not caring, ready for anything. Sunset outside makes everything cool and shivery wet, the end of summer and not as sweltering hot as California or Charleston. It's nice. He manages to bond across a language barrier with a middle-aged woman who serves him course after course of amazing unpronounceable Japanese food, his knees tucked under him on a cushion on the floor. Wishes he could hear the ocean, thinks of it in the back of his mind, a thought to fill space -- wishes it was perfect like that. He loves it anyway. Scribbles a list of ingredients in the notebook he's hardly used except to jot down food highlights and funny stories his one-night friends tell, snaps a selfie with the restaurant mom. Fodder for the Facebook album he's going to force on everyone and they'll goddamn like it. 

He tries to call Louis on the walk back to the train -- half his time in Japan is spent walking to trains, seems like, not a bad thing -- absent habit, before he remembers to consider the time difference. Going on five a.m. in LA, and he wonders if Louis is keeping track of the difference like that. It's just stupid how often he's thought about him already and the space between them, the practicality of that. Louis would love this random food stand, Louis would be loud if he was here, _why can't we have that. What's he doing right now that means he isn't here._ Measuring it like that, rationalizing. Makes it okay, still sad. 

So he almost calls him anyway -- how many times has Louis woken him up drunk-dialing or butt-dialing or trying out random strings of emoji just to see if Niall can make a story out of them. Or more than that, how about it: how many times has he wandered into his room in the middle of the night, coming hesitantly and then not so hesitantly into his bed. Into his space, always. 

Niall misses that, so much. Wishes he'd found a way to tell him, wishes Louis had said it back, these seemingly unsayable things. They said it and it wasn't enough. All this, the open air, a new country, too big without him. He wonders what he's doing. _So much for not doing this_ , he thinks, and it makes him laugh a little. So much for better intentions, which never were their strong suit. Something about wanting this to be worth more than rationalizing, to be worth everything, fuck it, fuck fear. And yet. And yet. He doesn't call. 

*

He gets through the next day ( _late morning is his evening, yesterday, tomorrow, 16 hours, 16 hours_ ) but it's just a moment of joyous _hi hi, can't believe you're calling me from_ Japan, _I know, has it only been, like, less than a week, so._ before Louis is going, "Listen, I've got Jan on the other line and I've been trying to touch base with him for like, weeks, you know --"

"Oh, yeah."

"So can I…?" And Niall's heart only sinks a little.

"Sure, 'course, go, go." 

Louis sounds dejected, to his credit. Like he's trying to hide it. "I'll call you right back when I'm done. Swear." 

"Yeah, yeah, go. I'll be around." 

He doesn't call back. And when he does hours later, Niall misses it. Finally a text -- late night, exhausted, nearly asleep at the hostel, arse o'clock Louis' time, they're almost -- no, they are in the same day. And how weird that feeling is. Louis must have forgot, the day before, his day before, he must be drunk now, or have been drunk and woken up early, he must only remember Niall when he isn't in his head. _Sorry ni guess today didnt work out.. :( we'll try the next one eh??_ He stares at it for a long time and in the end doesn't reply, not tonight. Because that would mean they were both there. Listening to each other's silence on the other end of the trans-Pacific line. Why waste that on texting unless there's nothing more to say. 

And that scares Niall more than the distance or the silence, more even than the thought of other people, the jealousy that sits in the back of his mind in concept but he doesn't even worry about it like that at all. In the morning, his morning, Louis' evening again, he texts back a _next time yea !!!_ Doesn't hear back. 

This is what he signed up for, by not signing up for anything. He made it this way. Has to keep telling himself that. They nearly cried saying bye at the airport, they kissed goodbye before, they've had too many goodbyes for how new this is, feels older. They said it quick, told each other's skin in the dark and and didn't call it anything out loud and didn't say what they wanted and now this is what they have.

*

He tries him in Hiroshima, can't manage it. Finally they set something up for Niall's birthday. He'll be in Kyoto, slightly nervy with it, being abroad by your lonesome on your birthday. And Louis wanting to talk. Actually talk, to make the time, to give that to what they have. Like threads between them, gathered up and held tight for just one conversation.

Niall doesn't call him when he said he would. He flicks the screen of his phone on, off, on, off. Goes miles without calling, can't put into words why he isn't doing it but he can't fucking do it. He drinks a beer with early lunch, wants Louis to call him for missing it, chew him out, that dry smile that hides a deeper hurt. Niall deserves that, though he knows it's not fair to put it on Louis, the burden of telling Niall off for being deliberately weird about everything. He just. He can't. He's been so afraid to carry it with him, scared to tote it behind him, the burden of being in love. Scared to find out one day, one country, that Louis is no longer at the other end of that invisible line. That Niall is all that's been giving it weight, a heaviness in wanting _them_ that Louis isn't even part of anymore. 

Misses a call from him when he's wandering through the courtyard of a temple with his phone on silent, stalling, trying to bring some peace to it, to be happy with whatever they are. With nothing. Just this. Whatever. Doesn't see the notification until an hour later and then he still can't bring himself to call back. 

He's made a fucking thing of it, anyway, by the time he finally pulls the trigger. Jumpy hands, planning what he'll say, can't hold onto any ideas. 

Louis picks up. And Niall knows as soon as he answers that he's drunk, and he feels like shit about it, instantly, so much worse than it should be. _I'm so sorry for making you wait,_ he thinks, _for doing this,_ but all he says is, "Did I wake you? Sorry it's so late." 

"Miss you so much, Ni." Louis blurts it like he wants to say it over and over, _wish you were here._ "I wanna go home." Niall laughs at him saying that, lost in Santa Monica trying to find Zayn or his car or the ocean, something, Niall can't quite tell. 

And he loves him, so much it's nearly unbearable not to know how or if or when to say it. Wants to. So badly it actually literally hurts, in his throat, like very cold or very hot. But instead it's, "I know, me too," about home. He thinks about it, wonders where he even means and that hurts, too, and so he tells Louis they're alright. "How's the Pacific from your side?" Silence, and he wonders if Louis found whatever he was looking for yet. "Big here," he answers his own question. "And it's a weird color. Wish you could see it. Bet you'd wanna film it. I wish we could take Thelma out." _Wish I could see your ocean, wish they were the same_. Says some but not all of it before he realizes that the line went dead forever ago. After the last thing Louis said. That Louis hung up on him or more likely his phone died. 

He tries to call back to confirm that theory and it goes straight to voicemail. He listens to Louis' voice grumbling through the familiar _yeah, call you back_ greeting, smiles in the corner of his mouth. Hangs up before the beep. 

Then he's just walking, looking up like he's been sleeping, still not all the way back to reality. He turns his phone over in his hands. Could shoot Louis a text for when he plugs his phone in -- something boring, _think we got disconnected but get home safe xx_ , something more, _you know i miss you every fucking day. love you. love you._ Doesn't end up sending anything. 

*

On the flight to Seoul he feels the ocean under him so strongly it's almost funny, almost makes him laugh, some difference there. The tug eastward is ridiculous. Like he's on another planet, going farther. Further. He shuts his eyes.

He points his thoughts West, tries to picture a circle from here, with Charleston, with New York, Chicago, LA at the other end. All relative. Falls asleep to it, and he wakes to the plane touching down and marvels, in the confused limbo exiting sleep, at the violence in even the smoothest landing. 

And when the crowds in little market streets or airports or museums get oppressive he imagines himself on Thelma, imagines the gentle rocking, blankets, the not-silence of open water. Louis' arms around him. Feels stupid, sad, not worth all this, worth so much of it, worth more than he can give. He tries to really open his eyes after every time he does something like that, whenever he gets too deep into the unreality of it. Tries to really see where he is. Light and color, presence. Here, not there.

But after a while he isn't sure if he's picturing Louis or Thelma first, the sway of them, easy comfort in spite of uncertainty. Waves are like that. The boat a respite still, less a reassurance. Niall shoves distance to the back of his mind and puts Charleston above LA in his list of world clocks on his phone, puts himself first like it's all that'll keep him afloat. His eyes still go to California first whenever he checks.


End file.
